Stop Waiting For Someone To Come With You: The Case For Taking The Trip Anyway

How many trips have you quietly put off because nobody else could come with you?

Not the big, complicated ones that require months of planning. The easy ones. A little coastal town you’ve been meaning to visit. A mountain trail you’ve saved on Instagram. The cooking class you keep telling yourself would be fun. The hotel you’ve looked at more than once, wondering what it would be like to wake up there.

You keep telling yourself you’ll go eventually. Just not now. Just not alone.

Because your friend is busy. Your partner can’t take leave. Your sister has plans. Your usual travel companion has already used up their annual leave. And somehow, without ever consciously deciding not to go, you find yourself still at home.

We tend to think of travel as something that requires coordination: matching calendars, agreeing on budgets, finding the right dates, and waiting for everyone to be ready.

But some trips don’t need all that. What if the only person who needs to be available is you?

A small solo trip can be enough

Let’s be clear: this isn’t an argument for throwing yourself into a month-long solo backpacking trip if the idea makes you miserable.
Nor does travelling alone have to become some grand declaration of independence.

There is a vast middle ground between “waiting for everyone to be available” and “becoming a fearless solo traveller”. That middle ground is full of small trips waiting to be explored and experienced.

Take the small trip. Drive somewhere you’ve never been and come home that evening. Book one night at a guesthouse. Go for the hike. Take yourself to that exhibition. Join a pottery, photography, or cooking class. Spend an afternoon exploring a nearby town.

This isn’t about reinventing your relationship with solitude. It is about giving yourself permission to have a nice day – with or without someone else coming along.

How many trips and experiences are you postponing?

Once you start paying attention to this, it becomes surprisingly easy to recognise just how many things you actually give up on without realising you are giving them up.

There are restaurants you haven’t tried because nobody else was interested. Places you’ve driven past for years, wanting to stop but never quite doing it. Weekend markets you’ve wanted to visit. Beaches you’ve never seen because the people you usually go with weren’t available.

And sometimes the thing you’re waiting for isn’t even another person. You’re waiting for the perfect circumstances.

More money. More time. Better weather. Someone to organise it. Someone to reassure you that it will be worth the effort.

Of course, some things genuinely are better shared. That’s part of what makes travel and exploring wonderful. There is something lovely about turning to someone and saying, “Did you see that?” or laughing about something that only the two of you will remember.

If I am honest, one of the big things I missed when I was solo travelling for a few years was having someone to turn to and say: ‘Remember that time when we…?’ The shared history and shared experiences. And yet, I am incredibly grateful that I have those memories. I choose to create them for myself, too.

You see, enjoying things with other people and enjoying things only if other people are there are two very different things. What lies beneath it is just enjoying the things themselves.

Start embarrassingly small

If the thought of travelling alone makes you uncomfortable, don’t begin with a plane ticket. Start with something so small that your brain has very little to argue about.

Go for breakfast in the next town. Drive somewhere for the afternoon. Book a one-night stay within easy reach of home. Take yourself to a museum or gallery you’ve been meaning to see.

The point isn’t to prove that you can survive (dare I say thrive) being alone. There is no achievement badge waiting for you, no one (literally) there to tell you what to do and when to do it. Or better yet, to allow yourself to do it. That is also kind of the point.

The idea is to discover what happens when you stop treating another person’s availability as the deciding factor in whether something is allowed to happen.

Often, nothing dramatic happens. You simply have a lovely time.

Small solo trips can make room for spontaneity

There is also something quietly liberating about not having to negotiate every tiny decision.

You can stop when you want to stop. You can spend an hour in a bookshop because you feel like it. You can change your route. You can sit somewhere with a coffee and watch people passing by. You can leave an attraction after twenty minutes because, actually, you’ve had enough.

There is no need to ask, “What do you want to do next?”

And maybe more importantly, there is no need to perform enjoyment for someone else. You can be curious. Bored. Spontaneous. Quiet. Indecisive.

You can change your mind. And change it again. That freedom can be surprisingly refreshing.

Leave room for other people, too

Taking the small trip yourself doesn’t mean deciding that you don’t need anyone – quite the opposite.

Sometimes, once you stop making companionship a requirement, being with other people becomes more enjoyable because it becomes a choice rather than a dependency.

You can still plan the big family holiday. You can still wait for your best friend before tackling that epic road trip. You can still save the romantic weekend away for when your partner can join you.

But perhaps you don’t have to wait for all of it. There can be trips, experiences, and adventures that belong only to you. Because sometimes they mean a lot more to you than to anyone else. The awe you experience is yours and yours alone. And that is worth going for.

Once you start taking them, you may find that your friends become more willing to join you in the future. Or you may discover places and experiences you’d never have suggested before because you were always trying to find something that worked for everyone.

Don’t let a missing travel companion stop you going

There is a strange assumption that an experience is somehow incomplete if there isn’t someone beside us to share it. Sometimes it is. And sometimes the empty seat is simply an empty seat.

The restaurant is still good. The view is still beautiful. The road is still interesting. The ocean doesn’t care whether you arrived with three friends or by yourself.

You don’t need to turn every outing into a lesson in independence. You don’t need to become someone who loves travelling alone.
You only need to ask yourself a slightly different question the next time you catch yourself saying, I’d love to do that, but nobody can come with me.

Instead of asking, “Who can I find to come?” Ask: “Would I still like to do it if I went by myself?”

If the answer is yes, perhaps that’s your sign.

Go.

Take the day trip. Book the night away. Walk the trail. Sit in the café. Take the class.

Let the bigger adventures wait for everyone’s calendars to align. But don’t keep postponing the small joys.

Your adventures can happen in the spaces between everybody else’s availability, too. In fact, that might be exactly where some of the best small adventures begin.